Grave of Silence
by Slavok
Summary: Alone for the first time, Neo Politan goes hunting, not knowing what she'll find, and with even less idea of what she's looking for. Takes place at the end of season four, cowritten by Magery.


Grave of Silence

Chapter One

"Memory's so treacherous. One moment you're lost in a carnival of delights, with poignant childhood aromas, the flashing neon of puberty, all that sentimental candy-floss … the next, it leads you somewhere you don't want to go. Somewhere dark and cold, filled with the damp ambiguous shapes of things you'd hoped were forgotten." -The Killing Joke

 _This is how it begins._

 _You are Neo Politan, and you are stretched out face-down on the couch, kicking your legs back and forth in long, lazy arcs. There's a book in your hand, but it's not really that interesting; you'd picked it because the cover art was pretty, which in hindsight was a mistake almost as bad as Junior's fashion sense. Maybe you should have asked Roman for his opinion, first. If nothing else, it would have meant the book amused you at least indirectly – it's always funny to watch people when the two of you talk._

 _(Mostly because it makes Roman look like_ he's _the crazy one, carrying on a two-way conversation with a girl who never says a word)._

 _You toss the book over your shoulder in a fit of pique._

 _The sound it makes is_ not _the sound of something hitting the floor._

" _Was that really necessary, Neo?" Ah, Roman. You had_ completely forgotten _he was sitting on the chair in front of the computer. Cross your heart and hope to lie._

 _You shrug, and twist your legs beneath you in a motion as graceful as it should be physically impossible until you're sitting up instead, staring at the dull grey of your inactive television rather than of the pale cream of the couch's armrest. Unfortunately, you forgot to have breakfast today, so your magnificence is somewhat undermined by what sounds like the half-breed cross of a chainsaw and a bubbling swamp._

 _Turning, you look at Roman, who had better not be laughing or you might forget to wash his favourite suit next week, when it's your turn for the laundry. Or maybe you'll accidentally mix it in with some of your capes – you're sure all that shiny white would look far more fabulous if it matched_ your _hair instead of his. Everyone knows you're the pretty one, anyway._

 _He's smirking._

 _The bastard._

" _Oh, fine," he says, getting up from his chair. "And you'd better leave my suits alone!"_

 _This time, you're the one who smirks._

 _Roman's voice sounds from the kitchen. "Uh, Neo, did you check the house when you got home?"_

 _You frown. Of course you did._

" _Are you_ sure _you checked the kitchen?"_

 _You glare in his general direction. Dust and darkness, you've been living this sort of life longer than_ he _has. It's more likely that he'd forget his hat than you'd forget to case a room, even in your own house._

" _I know, I know," Roman says, walking out of the kitchen, "but I don't think it's my birthday today, so I was sort of wondering why there are two women I've never seen before waiting for me in the kitchen."_

 _Behind him, somehow, are two women you too have never seen before. The shorter one looks like a delinquent and walks like a thief, and the taller one looks like a lover and walks like a fighter. Roman could probably take the first – you'll have to take the second. You'll find out how the_ fuck _they managed to get past you even if you have to carve each question into their skin._

 _Nobody comes here unless you let them._

Nobody.

" _Don't be like that, dear Neo," the taller one says, meeting your eyes with a smile as sharp as a knife. "We only want to talk, and it's just so_ hard _to get a hold of such illustrious personages as yourselves out and about in the bustle of the world. There's no need for hostility."_

 _You don't miss the glance she throws at Roman – Roman, who is standing directly in front of her, out of your reach and within hers._

 _Fine._

 _This is fine._

 _You can always kill them later._

" _Ah," Roman says, "forgive us, ladies, but I don't believe we've been introduced."_

 _He doffs his hat, and flourishes it into a bow that looks like it just stepped out of some Schnee family swank-off._

" _I am, of course, the indubitable Roman Torchwick, and, as you already know, this is my lovely assistant Neo. What brings you to our humble abode?"_

" _How careless of me," Tall says. You'd say her voice sounds like sin, but you know sin. It's a honest thing, and you've heard more honesty out of_ your _mouth than hers. "You may call me Cinder. This is Emerald."_

 _Green hair, green outfit, and her name is Emerald. What next, a redhead called Scarlet?_

" _As for our purpose, well, you see, we're looking to make some…_ acquisitions _in the near future, and we thought you might be able to help us out."_

 _You raise an eyebrow. This is supposed to be about a job, and not some stupid shakedown 'I know where you live' by whoever's trying to muscle in on the city of Vale this year? Sure, and you're a six foot seven Bear faunus married to Winter Schnee._

" _Then you've come to exactly the right place," Roman says, and you can feel his business smile stretching his teeth shark-wide. He takes a few steps backward, until he's level with you, and rests a hand on your shoulder. "Why, just last week, Neo here helped me acquire some prize Dust stock straight from the docks. Prime Huntsman-grade, shipped in especially for Beacon."_

 _You have no idea where he got it from, or why he had it in the first place, but his other hand drops something into your pocket. You don't need to look to know what it is._

" _I was hoping to resell it, but," Roman shrugs, "I guess you can't have anything."_

 _You whip the vial of red Dust out of your pocket, toss it across the room, and detonate it with a flare of your Aura in front of Cinder's face even as you pluck your parasol from where it rests against the television._

 _Let's see her smile_ that _off._

 _The smoke clears. Your ears stop ringing._

 _Cinder is smirking, utterly untouched. Emerald is behind her, half-flinched away from the explosion._

What the fuck.

" _It's funny," she says, "that, of all things, you decided to pick_ fire _."_

 _The air around her ignites, and you suddenly realise that maybe—just possibly—you might perhaps be a little bit out of your league._

" _Now, now," Roman replies, arms raised in a conciliatory gesture that incidentally leaves you perfectly free to move, "let's not be hasty here! We just wanted to show you the quality of the product we'd managed to obtain – you know, as proof we're good at what we do. Neo is just a little… enthusiastic about her demonstrations, sometimes."_

" _An interesting method of negotiation." The inferno dies away – or so she'd like you to think. You can see it simmering in the corners of her smile, and the way her fingers drum against the lazy slant of her hip. She'll have to try better than that._

 _Her eyes cut to yours, and you realise she's not trying at all._

 _You're used to treating people like toys. It is surprisingly uncomfortable to be on the receiving end._

" _Ah, you know how it is," Roman says, "you have to keep the client entertained! There's no point just providing a service; any old two-bit thug can break down a door. I'd know. I've hired plenty. But real thievery requires style! Pizzazz! You've got to capture your audience. Make them love you. Make them miss the stagehand fleecing their wallets."_

" _Or you could just rob them blind with skill, instead of overcompensating with an expensive coat and a ridiculous hat."_

 _Emerald can, apparently, speak. Who knew?_

 _Roman looks at her, and frowns. "Sure, kid, but that'd be_ boring _."_

 _He says the word 'boring' the way other men might say 'taxes'._

 _(At least, you think so. You don't really know much about taxes, on account of the fact they're things that happen to other people)._

" _Now shoo," he continues, waving a hand at her. "The adults are talking. You already made yourself at home in our kitchen, so go put that to use and get us a drink."_

 _Whatever Emerald is about to say in reply is cut off when Cinder rests a gentle hand on her shoulder. She falls silent immediately, stiffening into a parade rest that wouldn't look out of place in Atlas' military._

" _You're quite right," Cinder says, as if the last minute never existed. "With that sort of attitude to your work, I look forward to seeing what else you're capable of."_

 _She and Roman begin to talk, but you start tuning them out. Roman's got thrice the mind for business you do, and you trust him. He'll make sure it'll be more than worth your while. Instead, you watch Cinder. You watch Emerald. You study every little twitch of expression, every slight shift of stance, every last inch of skin._

 _It's Roman's job to make sure the both of you get out with a profit._

 _It's your job to make sure the both of you get out with your lives._

 _That's the way it's always been._

 _The way it always will be._

WWW

Neo was many things, but a loner she was not. It wasn't just her scandalous love affair with the spotlight (though if she hadn't pursued a life of crime, she would have become an actress), but Neo could stand out in a crowd or blend into it at will—assuming that there was a crowd in the first place. She had left the crowds behind in the city she had helped break, and had been traveling alone ever since. She hated it.

She had waited, far longer than Roman could have expected her to. He had always told her to look out for herself, to never look back, but she had waited for him all the same. The Noble Defenders of Beacon had loaded up every warm body they could find onto their Bullheads and flown away, and she had last seen Emerald carrying Cinder's charred and mangled body back to wherever they had come from, but Neo had stayed behind.

He was still there, she knew, somewhere between the wreckage and the ruins. Any day, any week, any month she'd find him, complaining about how he had lost his hat or torn his suit, and wondering what had taken her so long.

Or maybe he had gotten arrested. Yes, that was it. The girl in red seemed like the sort to take prisoners, to show _mercy_ , so Roman was probably lounging in some Atlesian prison right now, driving his guards to the point of madness.

But wherever he was, he had survived. That was what he always did. It was practically his catchphrase.

She left Beacon and hit the road, passing through villages that hadn't seen a real Huntsman since they started toying with death. She quite liked the simple folk who lived so far away from anything important, and she always left richer for having met them. It was amazing what a stranger would part with if you smiled just right and beat him half to death with an umbrella.

But those villages were few and far between, and she spent most of her travels with nothing to keep her company but the sound of silence. She hated silence, all that deafening, smothering _nothing_. Before, there had always been Roman, talking for hours on end even if he had nothing to say. Now with nothing to distract her, she found herself more and more in her own head—a dangerous place to be with a mind like hers.

And those _memories_. She could drown in those things if she wasn't careful. It was nonsense, all of it, disjointed grocery lists of pointless, one-way conversations. As much as she tried to focus on her surroundings, she found herself again and again slipping back into yesterday where Roman was presenting their next heist or musing on how to outmaneuver their competition. If she couldn't forget the past, then she wished there was a way she could at least make it _shut up_!

She passed more villages. Satashi. Mephess. Kuroyuri. None of them had enough of interest to pull her into the present, and the last one looked like a decade-old open grave. The overcast sky suited the place, she thought, and she found herself wearing black to fit in—not that anyone was around to notice.

But then she heard it, a word, a voice, a muffled conversation. It came closer, and the sound of footfalls joined the symphony.

When she found the speaker, though, Neo stopped dead in her tracks. It was _her_ , the girl in red, the girl she had fought the last time she had been with Roman. Neo had only met her once, but here she was, clear as day, dopey expression of earnestness on her face and all. She carried a dying man on a stretcher behind her with a boy Neo didn't recognize, but that didn't matter.

 _Oh, what providence._

After all this time wandering through the backwoods of old ruins, she finally realized what she had been looking for.

 _Closure._

She smiled. She expected the girl—her name was Ruby, she remembered—to flee, maybe, if she was smart, or pull out her scythe and attack if she wasn't. Instead, she set down the stretcher she was carrying and ran towards Neo, waving, saying the last thing she could have expected.

"I need your help!"

WWW

" _I need your help!"_

 _You are Neo Politan, and you tilt your head to the side. You thought you'd already cleared out the building. What could possibly be going wrong now?_

 _You step over a body—probably not dead, probably wishes that wasn't true—and skip through the halls, parasol trailing over your shoulder. Roman didn't sound panicked, and you've been running around all day. You can afford to indulge yourself._

 _When you arrive, Roman is standing in front of a wall-mounted safe. It's a silly word, really. Having one doesn't make you safe, it makes you more likely to be robbed. And they're not very good at keeping what's_ in _them safe, either. Not from the more discerning class of criminal, anyway._

 _Except this one, apparently, since a couple of Roman's lockpicks are lying broken on the floor, and his slicer-specced scroll is bleeping angrily._

 _If you could laugh, you would. Based on the way Roman frowns at you, he knows that too._

" _It's the latest Shinkiro model," he says. "Haven't seen one of these before, only heard about them. I think I'm going to need some better tools to break it open. A rush job won't do it."_

 _You look at him. He's the better thief, so what does he expect you to do about it?_

" _Well, my pint-sized partner, I don't have those tools with me. They're at home. So I was thinking, perhaps—"_

 _Dust and darkness, if he thinks you're going to run all the way home just to fetch some fiddly little fancy lockpicks, you're going to stab him in the foot._

" _Please don't," Roman says, "and that's not what I was planning anyway. I've been looking forward to a chance to study some Shinkiro tech more closely, and this is the perfect opportunity. So how about you rip this thing out of the wall, and take it home? It'll be sort of like getting a puppy, except useful."_

 _You can do that._

 _The wall is solid concrete, but the blade in your parasol is Dust-infused steel, and so all it takes is the slightest thrust of your arm and Aura for it to carve a circle around the safe, parting the stone like water. A few sharp punches crack the rest until you can start pulling fragments away, and soon enough you've excavated enough to just reach in and drag the safe out._

 _It's twice the size of your head, and, rapping a knuckle against the side, you can tell the walls are at least six inches of solid metal._

 _You heft it onto your shoulder with a lazy, liquid shrug, and start to walk away._

 _A lot of people call you Roman's muscle._

 _A lot of people don't realise how literal that truly is._

 _You're pretty sure he can't even bench-press a cat._

WWW

Ruby trudged through the ruins of the village; Kuroyuri, according to the stone plaque at the entrance. Once, the sign would have been a welcome. Now it was a gravestone. One of the first villages she had passed through on their journey had been menaced by Grimm, the second destroyed by them. This village had died years ago.

Behind her, Qrow lay on a stretcher, breathing so softly she could barely hear him. Before, his shallow breathing had terrified her, but now, knowing that her uncle was clinging to life—if only barely—was the only thing keeping her going.

 _This isn't right_ , she thought. Qrow was too strong to be like this, too strong to be _dying_. Even passed out and drunk, he had always been invincible. What was wrong with the world where _she_ was trying to save _him_?

And honestly, her track record at saving her friends wasn't that great. Penny. Pyrrha. Five seconds was all it took to make a tragedy, and Uncle Qrow had been unable to stand for nearly a day.

"See anything that looks like a pharmacy?" she asked, looking at the empty buildings around them.

"It's hard to tell," Jaune said behind her, carrying the foot end of Qrow's stretcher. He was right. Many of the buildings had collapsed ages ago, either from Grimm or rot, and none of the rest had signs. "Even if we did, how would we know what medicine to use? We're not doctors."

Again, he was right. They weren't doctors.

They were Huntsmen. Maybe they hadn't graduated, but they had _survived_ , and they would continue to survive. Somehow.

"I was hoping to find people here," Ruby said. "It seems it gets harder the further you are from the big cities."

"Yeah." He didn't have anything to say. Neither of them did, but it was either talk, or listen to the sound of silence and Qrow's breathing.

"I'm sure we'll find something," she said, trying to sound cheerful. "It will take a miracle, but we'll get through this somehow."

"Hope so."

"Have you ever had a miracle, Jaune? When I was little, I would sometimes count the little miracles, like having just enough cereal left in the box to fill up the bowl, but … have you ever had a real one?"

For a moment, he didn't answer, and all Ruby could hear was silence. _He's still breathing, he's still breathing._ "Yes. Once."

Ruby felt herself smile. "Really? What was it?"

He hesitated. "I'd rather not say."

"Oh, come on, Jaune! I gotta know!"

"It was … it was when Pyrrha found me in the Emerald Forest." Ruby winced, feeling her heart break all over again. "I wasn't close to ready for what I was getting into, and I don't think I could have survived even the landing if she wasn't looking out for me."

She bit her lip. _I'm sure she's still looking out for you?_ That was patronizing sympathy at its finest. _Now you can look out for others?_ Again, cheap and empty. "Maybe we'll get another one?"

She regretted the words as soon as she said them, but before she could add anything to make it better (or probably worse), she found someone.

A stranger was standing just around a corner, looking at her. She was about Ruby's age, though a bit shorter, with wavy black hair and emerald-green eyes. The girl looked as though she was dressed up to go to a funeral, but Ruby had seen too many crazy costumes to think less of her for it.

They set down the stretcher as gently and quickly as they could, and Ruby ran towards the girl before she had a chance to lose her. "I need your help!" she said, waving her arms. "My uncle's hurt. Is there any medicine around here, a pharmacy or something?"

The girl's eyes widened, and her surprise shifted into confusion.

"Are—are you from here?" Ruby asked. "Do you know where everyone is? Is there anyone who can help? Please, my uncle's dying! He got stung by a scorpion Faunus and … and I can't lose him too! Please, I need your help!"

The girl tilted her head—and then she smiled. Her eyes filled with understanding … and then changed color, one becoming brown and the other pink. _What?_ _Where have I seen that before?_

The girl's clothes changed too, her black dress becoming brown pants and a white and pink jacket over top. _Oh no._ Her hair became half brown, and half pink with white streaks. _No, no no! Not here, not now!_

Neo swung her parasol onto her shoulder, as casually and as gracefully as if she were on stage.

 _Not again!_

WWW

 _Not again!_

 _These are the words you will live by. You are Ruby Rose, and you are the fastest person you have ever met. You are the lightning forking through the open sky; the bullet to make other bullets blush. When you run, you are the girl who time forgets._

 _And yet, you are still not fast enough._

 _Mercury beat you down, kept you caged like a boy playing with his dog, and Pyrrha killed Penny because of it. Not Pyrrha's fault._ Yours _. Because you were too weak. Too useless. Too_ slow _._

 _It is the first time you have ever failed a friend._

 _It will be the last._

 _You have never run like this before. You are tired. So tired. Each stride feels like you're trying to cover a continent. You're not sure if you're even running anymore, or if you're just falling horizontally, each stumbling step throwing you into the next. But Pyrrha is trying to fight_ Cinder _, and even if you can't stand by the time you reach her side, who cares? You can still kneel, and you don't need legs to shoot._

 _Before you, the tower stabs into the sky, a dark, blurring grey like the world at the edge of your vision. That might worry you, if there was room in your head for anything but speed. Instead, you hit the wall and just_ keep going, _sprinting straight up the side._

 _Strangers think your Semblance is pure speed, but they're wrong. It's acceleration, too. Momentum._ Motion. _The laws of physics tell you nobody can change direction like you do at the speeds you move; even with Aura, inertia should tear your body apart the first time you try to step sideways at six hundred kilometres an hour._

 _The laws of physics, you've found, have no idea what they're talking about._

 _You reach the top in the span of two seconds, and_ stop.

 _No._

 _No._

No.

 _Cinder lays a hand on Pyrrha's brow, and the incorruptible, indomitable,_ invincible _girl disintegrates into a thousand dying sparks._

 _She's gone._

 _You were too late._

 _Again._

 _No. That's a lie. Pyrrha's not dead. You haven't failed her. This is a joke. A trick. This is_ not how the world should be _._

 _You vaguely realise you are screaming. You can barely hear it over the silence in your head. It feels like you're standing in the space between lightning and thunder. Everything's so simple in that silence. This not how the world should be, so you just have to change it. You just have to_ break _it._

 _So you do._

 _Your eyes catch fire._

 _And then there is_ light _._

WWW

Well, that was embarrassing. Here Neo was, all geared up to have a rematch with an old enemy—as old as her enemies usually got, at least—and she wasn't even dressed.

If it was any consolation, Ruby wasn't going to tell anyone.

After a quick change, she was ready.

Ruby jumped back and pulled out her scythe. Neo was half convinced that the girl had chosen that weapon as a joke. What was the point in a weapon bigger than you were, Neo wondered, when arteries were so small?

"I don't want to fight you!" Ruby said.

 _Of course not. You'd die._

"We were just passing through, and we don't want any trouble. I've got more important things to worry about …"

More important than her? Well, that was a little insulting.

"… so if you go your way, we'll go ours."

That plan didn't appeal to Neo at all. What would Roman say if he caught her passing up an opportunity like this? She stepped forwards.

"But if you want to fight, then so be it, but remember—last time you had _me_ outnumbered. This time I have Jaune with me, and he's even stronger than I am."

"What?" the blonde boy, Jaune, said. He had drawn a sword and shield, but he didn't look like he knew how to use them. "Since when?"

Ruby winced. "I was bluffing. We're dead. We are so dead."

"Oh. Sorry."

"It's okay. I don't think she would have believed me anyway."

 _Or cared if I had._ She darted forward, stopping just out of range of Ruby's scythe. The girl swung it anyway, and the weapon passed harmlessly in front of her, leaving Ruby exposed. The girl was fast, yes, but Ruby fought with the bluster of a gale while Neo was a river, flowing into every crack in her defense. She closed the gap and attacked with a flurry of blows, striking Ruby's neck and knee with her umbrella and finishing with a double-footed kick square in the chest.

Ruby went flying and landed flat on her back, and Jaune attacked in her stead. Neo played defensively, wanting to see what the boy was capable of. She usually did when fighting strangers, if only because it was more fun, but Jaune … Jaune was _pathetic_. There was no thought or planning to his attacks, and barely any skill. She grew bored after the third second, and flipped over him, clotheslining him with her umbrella and flinging him into a wall.

Ruby came back, scythe swinging, but Neo dodged it easily. That was the thing about heavy weapons. Even if you were strong enough to attack quickly, you still telegraphed every move, and the weapon's momentum worked against you every time you missed.

Jaune stood up, rotten wood falling off of him. "Who _is_ this girl?"

"Don't know," Ruby said. "Roman called her Neo, but I couldn't land a single hit on her last time."

"Crud."

"And neither could Yang."

" _Crud!_ Any ideas?"

Ooh, were they going to try to team attack her? Neo hoped they would. It would be fun to get them to kill each other on accident.

"Yeah. Get Uncle Qrow out of here. I'll hold her off."

"That sounds reckless and self sacrificing."

Neo nodded in agreement, not that she was criticizing.

Ruby smiled and swung her scythe around in a flourish, either to show off or shake the jitters out. "Well, you know what they say. If it's not broke, don't fix it."

 _Oh, they don't have words for how broken you will be when I am done._

Jaune ran off to grab the old man—Uncle Qrow—and Ruby stood between them. "What are you even doing here, Neo? Are you here for the same reason Tyrian was?"

Tyrian? Never heard of him. Ruby was stalling to give her friends time to escape ( _Dust_ , heroic sacrifices were tedious), but it was a fair question. Never one to mince words, Neo simply changed clothes, adopting a long white jacket and a feathered cap and turning her hair orange.

Ruby's face went pale. "Oh."

Oh? Oh wasn't good.

Ruby took a breath. "I'm sorry, Neo. I really am."

Neo blinked. _No. Don't you_ dare _._

"But I'm not the one who killed him, I swear! When we were fighting a Grimm came out of nowhere and, um, kind of ate him."

Neo tilted her head until she was nearly looking at her sideways. _What. What?_ She had been hiking all over nowhere to find out what _jail_ to break him out of, not to find out that he was _dead!_ And what kind of death was _that_ , to be eaten by a random monster? Roman Torchwick was a survivor, yes, but more than that, he was a _drama queen_.

She shook herself so hard she stumbled. _"It's just you and me, Neo! The whole of Vale is an open bank vault, waiting just for us! We may be starting small, but don't worry one bit; we're going to make it to the top, even if we have to …_

… _even if we …_

But what was the point of it all if he was just going to die anyway? Why plan every heist, hostile takeover, and doublecross for the next twenty years if he wasn't going to live to make it happen?

Neo wondered if Ruby was lying, but she doubted it. If the girl was clever enough to lie, she would have come up with something that would make Neo _less_ homicidal. No. She had come all this way for _nothing_ , and she just didn't want to admit it. Now, though, she was able to move on from the denial, and skip to the fun part of the grieving process: anger.

Her clothes and hair flickered, and her eyes blurred in colors—green, red, black, pink—before she regained control. Ruby could have used her lapse to at least get a hit in, but instead the girl stood there, scythe in hand, waiting.

Well, that was her mistake.

She dashed forward, and Ruby's scythe whirled to intercept, not leaving her an opening like she had before. No, there was an opening—just a different one. She backpedaled, letting Ruby think she was driving her back until Neo got a better idea of her attack pattern, and then she snagged the scythe with the handle of her umbrella.

The momentum yanked Neo off the ground and swung her around, but it threw Ruby off balance completely. Neo landed on her feet and pulled Ruby off hers, sending her flying and her weapon clattering away. She could follow up on the attack and finish the girl off before Ruby could recover if she wanted to, but did she? No. A quick death was no fun. Neo had a better idea.

She half skipped, half ran to the Jaune fellow and did a handstand off his head. He dropped Qrow, who fell to the ground with a thud. He could have run and hoped that Neo wasn't interested in him, but instead he redrew the sword that he had already proven to be incompetent with.

"Can we talk about this?" he asked. "You seem like a nice, reasonable, um, sane—okay that was wishful thinking, but just once couldn't I run into a stranger on the road who wasn't dead, dying, or psychotic?"

Neo smiled, her face more vicious than sweet. _Not today. This is the real world._ Behind him, Ruby got up and grabbed her scythe. Perfect. Jaune swung his sword, so clumsily she barely needed to dodge. She hooked his wrist in her handle, jumped over him again, and flung him right into Ruby's attack.

They crashed into each other and went rolling in a tangle of limbs and good intentions. It couldn't have been more satisfying if one of them had been cut in half.

Neo turned to the man, Qrow, lying prone in the dirt. Ruby had said that he was dying, and with his strained breathing and sallow skin, he looked to have both feet in the grave. Poisoned, perishing from the inside out. How precious. He opened his eyes, blood red, and looked at her with indifference. She smiled back.

It would be so easy, to finish him off. Just a bit of happy stabby fun and a job well done. She didn't know what the man meant to Ruby, why she was dragging him all over the middle of nowhere, but she would get to watch him die.

 _If_ that was what Neo wanted.

If that was what …

If she …

WWW

" _No! Don't kill him!"_

 _You are Neo Politan, and you don't exactly understand why Torchwick is yelling. Why shouldn't you? Nobody will care about some random security guard, and you're running short on time. There's no point risking him waking up too early and ruining the job because you didn't hit him hard enough._

 _Torchwick sighs. "You're probably wondering why, right? I doubt you'll understand if I say the idea of a twelve-year-old girl slitting the throat of a relatively innocent man on my orders makes me uncomfortable in ways I thought I'd stopped caring about years ago, so let me put it another way. The one thing that really gets the cops buzzing is murder. They chase after it like dogs to a bone, or the White Fang to equality. If there's a difference. Point is, turning Johnny Beefcake into John Doe is going to make our lives much harder than him waking up while we're trying to get out of here."_

 _He smirks._

" _Besides, you embarrassed him in thirty seconds. The only thing he's going to do if he gets in the way again is give you a chance to break that record."_

 _You nod. That's true. The two of you haven't worked together all that long, and for all Torchwick has done for you, he's still not someone you trust. But his reasoning makes sense. No happy stabby fun time for you it is, then. How disappointing._

 _The rest of the bank is relatively unguarded, which you do your best not to show your amazement at; you didn't believe Torchwick when he said he'd be able to guarantee you'd barely face any opposition, and it looks like you should have. Maybe he_ is _as dependable as he claims to be. Soon enough, you stand in front of the vault, and a few minutes later it clicks open as Torchwick steps away._

" _Locks are like women," he says in satisfaction. "You just have to touch them the right way."_

 _You cock your head to the side, and he seems to realise you're still there._

" _Forget I said that."_

 _You smirk. He's only seventeen, maybe eighteen. You're pretty sure he knows just as much about girls as_ you _do, which is to say you know what whores are for, but not why people like it so much. Adults are weird._

 _You gather up as much of the cash as you can and stuff it into the bags Torchwick has brought along – not the most efficient way to do things, but you're not here for efficiency. You're here to make the bank paranoid, so they up their security and hire new guards, including one Roman Torchwick with faked credentials so he has inside access and can start playing around with their_ electronic _security. It's a lot easier to carry around the password for an account that's just been transferred a hundred thousand lien than two sacks that'll barely amount to five thousand._

 _The first and only problem with the heist comes, as it usually does, with the getaway. The man who you remember Torchwick talking to about the job is waiting in one of the side alleys, with five of his own thugs and a smile uglier than all of them put together._

" _Nice haul you've got there, Roman," he says. "I reckon it looks like just enough to pay me for telling you about it."_

 _Torchwick sighs, and you almost believe the bravado behind it. "Really, Hong? You're really going to do this?"_

 _Hong spreads his arms, taking his hands away from his gun and blocking the sight-lines of the two thugs next to him. Idiot. "Are you trying to skive me of what I'm owed? Please, Roman, we can be civilised about this. Just pay up and everyone can walk away."_

 _Torchwick turns to you, and you can see the hand hidden by the side of his body flicking a switch on the side of his cane. "Hey, pipsqueak. Remember what I said about not killing the security guard?"_

 _He whips the cane up, launching a flare straight at Hong's feet. "It turns out my attack of conscience was only temporary, and my reasons don't apply to people the cops don't give a crap about. Sic 'em, girl."_

 _You grin, wild and wicked._

 _The flare detonates—a short, searing explosion that sends Hong and his thugs reeling—and you are two steps behind it. It will be years before you steal what will become your parasol; for now, your hands sprout knives, all glinting steel and savagery. You slide under a wave of wild gunfire and launch yourself forward like a viper, slipping your fangs into a nameless thug's neck._

 _You have never killed anyone before this moment._

 _It has not been from lack of trying._

 _You twist yourself up and over his head with nothing but the strength of your arms and core, and his body convulses as one of his 'friends' tries to shoot you through him. It doesn't work – just like the third thug's legs, as you cut out his tendons on your way to Hong. Blood sprays, lit up by the star-bright burst that is a second flare from Torchwick, pretty as a sunrise. You step around bullets like you're dancing between raindrops, and—fittingly—stab Hong in the back._

 _He staggers, but does not fall._

 _So you stab him again._

 _And again._

 _Hong collapses, hitting the ground with a thud like the lid of a coffin closing. Loud and final. You look around, but the last thug is running away, and the fourth has the barrel of Torchwick's cane resting an inch from his head._

" _Now, friend," Torchwick says, "let this be a lesson to you. When somebody hires you to cross Roman Torchwick, remember this day. Tell your friends, if you have any. Tell the dregs you drink with at that shitty bar Junior wants to take over. But don't tell them about me."_

 _Torchwick nudges the thug's head over with his cane, until that terrified gaze is looking directly at you. You smirk, blood slipping from your knives like Hong's last, gasping breath._

" _Tell them about_ her _."_

 _He turns, picking up the sacks of loot, and strolls out of the alley with the sort of arrogant insouciance you've always dreamed of emulating. Maybe he can teach you._

 _A few minutes later, your knives freshly cleaned and sheathed, Torchwick speaks again._

" _You're a vicious little thing, aren't you?"_

 _You turn to look at him, a little confused._

" _Don't worry," he says. "I like that. I think this could be the start of a beautiful partnership."_

WWW

Ruby scrambled out from under Jaune, wishing that she could pull her friends out of their situation as easily. Neo wasn't that strong, and she wasn't as fast as Ruby was, but she was _skilled_. Precise. Focused on counter attacks. She knew she couldn't just keep throwing herself at the girl—if that could work, it would have already—but it was like someone took the best attributes of Blake and Weiss and put them into one person. Everyone had a weakness, but for the life of her, she couldn't see Neo's.

But she could see her now, standing above Uncle Qrow, who was too weak to defend himself. Too weak to stand.

Ruby ran. Five seconds. Five seconds to make a tragedy, four to save the day.

 _One._

She snatched Crescent Rose off the ground. She had tossed it aside before she crashed into Jaune to avoid hurting him, and she hoped the delay wouldn't cost Qrow his life. These days, it felt like hope was all she had going for her.

 _Two._

She charged at Neo. The straightforward attack hadn't worked for her yet, but this time, it _had_ to. She had lost friends before. _Penny. Pyrrha._ But Qrow was more than a friend. He was _family_.

 _Don't be too late. Not again._

 _Three._

She struck, and Neo, distracted, didn't even try to block or dodge. Instead, she _shattered_. It took Ruby a moment to realize what had happened, but Neo could make illusionary decoys kind of like Blake could, except Neo's broke like glass rather than fade away. She glanced back to check on Qrow, but he was gone. Her blood ran cold.

 _Four._

"Qrow? Qrow?!" She screamed his name, her voice echoing through the dead village and the empty sky, but no one answered. No one heard.

 _Five._

WWW

 _Six._

 _You are Neo Politan, and it takes six seconds from the moment you decide to go on the offensive to the moment Yang Xiao Long hits the roof. And then the floor._

 _Is this all she has? Is this all it takes? She's supposed to be the one who takes a hit and just gets stronger. She's supposed to be your_ antithesis _, all raw power and brute strength. You saw it against Roman's Paladin. You heard it from Cinder's briefings._

 _But this is pathetic. A joke so sad you're not even laughing. Your face mocks her but your mind is just… disappointed. A girl like this won't survive what's coming. You'd say it'd be a mercy to kill her, if you believed in silly things like that._

 _You slide your blade out of your parasol, and stalk over to her body. All her teammates are far away, but if there's one thing that Roman's taught you, it's that style is most important when there's nobody around to see it. You have to own it. Breathe it. Live it._

 _Two things Yang Xiao Long won't be doing for much longer, you think with a smile made of sharp edges and sadism._

 _You're just about to stab when something is suddenly wrong. You turn and then throw yourself backward in a motion so smooth it has neither beginning nor ending, a sword taller than you splitting the air so close to your skin you have to check to make sure it didn't cut you. What on Remnant is goi—_ oh _._

 _You look up, and see her. Tall, with hair like a sea of black knives and a mask forged from nightmare and bone. Her clothes look like they've been dipped in blood; her sword suggests it wasn't hers. Even her eyes—glaring out of the holes in her mask—are stained the colour of violence. You don't know her name. You've never seen her face. But you've heard the stories. The rumours. You and Roman are thieves. Con artists. Criminals._

 _She is a_ warlord _._

 _And you are completely out of your league._

 _So you do what you've always done. You remember the first lesson ever beaten into you, when you were a pathetic, crawling child. The first law of the streets. The first rule of crime. Never be where your enemy is strong. You step backward, wrapping sound and shadow around your body. Your Semblance is illusion, and so that is what you become._

 _When you hit the ground, you are already running._

WWW

Qrow took his sweet time waking up. Neo couldn't _really_ blame him, considering what he had waiting for him, but still, watching a middle-aged man abuse the snooze button on his deathbed was not her idea of a good time.

She had dragged him to a nearby cave in the mountainside, listening to Ruby's cries for her uncle grow fainter and further with each step. That … hadn't amused her as much as she had expected it to.

He opened his eyes and looked around at the smooth stone walls that surrounded them. Dim light shone through from the cave's entrance, but there was enough to see. He studied everything within his view, briefly, efficiently, scanning their little hole in the ground for exits and surprises alike. His eyes were blood red, she realized, when he treated her to the same distant analysis with which he treated everything else.

Neo could adopt different looks in an instant, and she was careful to know what each one meant. Some hair and eye colors could be natural, and others required dye and contacts or, in her case, a unique Semblance. Nearly everyone with red eyes were in the latter category, but one of the exceptions had nearly killed her.

And yet, if Qrow were dangerous, he wouldn't be dying.

"Well, I'm still alive, so I'm guessing you're not here to kill me," he said, his voice as much a croak as a whisper, low and raspy. "That would be a … waste of time at this point anyway."

He waited for her to confirm that, but true to form, she remained silent. "I guess you could try to interrogate me," he continued, "but I don't think I could handle anything rough, and I don't have time for nothing slow. That leaves … not a lot." He broke into a fit of coughing.

He was astute, and surprisingly realistic. He knew he was going to die, and no amount of wishing upon a star would change that. She had assumed that everyone in Ruby's merry band wore rose-tinted glasses, but this man could give Roman a run for his money. Roman, at least, was convinced that he was going to come out on top of the cold, vicious world he was in, but Qrow seemed dead set on ending up, well, dead.

"So … so, kid." He was breathing heavily, and Neo doubted he would last the night. "What do you want?"

She hesitated. Out of all the things that would give her pause, it would be _that_ question. It used to be easy. She had dedicated most of her life to being able to do whatever she wanted, except what she was supposed to wanted had always been given to her before she could figure it out on her own. She wanted to take down the guards before they could sound an alarm. She wanted to help build a criminal empire. But she had never wanted anything _on her own_ deeper than a flavor of ice cream.

Now she was on her own. And that wasn't what she wanted.

"You hear me, kid? You wouldn't have dragged me out here unless you wanted something."

Wouldn't she? She supposed that didn't make much sense. She could have killed Qrow, she could have killed Ruby, she could have killed everyone, but she didn't. She didn't _want_ to.

Because she didn't have anyone to give the order? No. If anything, during her time working with Roman she needed to be compelled _not_ to kill more often than the alternative. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to vent her frustration on the few people she could blame and move on, so why hadn't she? She could have ended everything, then and there.

 _Because all my friends are dead, and enemies are all I have left._

No. No, that was pathetic. And stupid. And again, pathetic.

"You don't talk much, do you?" He pulled out a hip flask and upended it into his mouth, but it turned out to be empty. He scowled, seemingly more upset about that than the oozing purple wound in his side. Judging by the smell of liquor that hung around him like cheap cologne, Neo surmised that alcoholism was his nagging wife, his secret mistress, and his bosom friend all in one. "You don't talk much," he said again, "but I can guess. You didn't kill me, and you didn't kill her. Either you have an elaborate plan that I'm not seeing, kid, or you haven't got a clue. If it's the second one, glower silently."

Neo ignored him. Deliberately, which defeated the purpose of ignoring him in the first place, but she knew what he was doing. He had lost, so he tried to make one last jab at her before the end, like when she impaled a man through the chest and he wasted his dying breath trying to spit blood at her.

 _You have nothing left to lose, so you try your hand at causing pain._ Pathetic. _Like me._

She stood abruptly to clear her mind, and tried to keep track of what color her eyes had turned. She couldn't see them without a mirror, but she had an instinctive awareness about her illusions, if not an instinctive control.

"Looks like I hit a nerve. Lucky me. I was in and out of consciousness for most of it, so let me know if I missed anything. You weren't looking for us, so I guess it was just bad luck on our part that you found us at all, and there's some bad blood between you and Ruby. That and a corpse, but let's not dwell on the past. You fought because, well, why not? What else are you supposed to do when you meet an enemy on the road? Depart in peace? Sure, if you got somewhere you need to be, but you don't, do you?"

He motioned towards the wound in his side. "They guy who did this? Total nutcase. Everyone's got a bit of crazy buried just beneath the surface, but he didn't try to hide it. Even he's a part of something, though, has a place to live in somewhere in the third circle of hell, and a few friends who tolerate his incessant giggling. Not you, though, or you wouldn't be here. So what do you do? You travel through ruined villages because you have nowhere to go, you pick fights you don't need to win because you have nothing to do, and you wander around aimlessly because you have _no idea_ what you're looking for."

What were the odds? Neo had ended up with yet another blathering cynic. She shook her head, but he didn't seem convinced.

"Oh, so you _do_ know what you're looking for. I'm sorry, I thought you were just another lost, damned soul on this side of crazy like everyone else. So what is it, kid? I'm dying to know." He laughed weakly, then broke into a cough. "But really, if you're so enlightened, what are you after? What do you want?"

She shivered, not used to this sort of attention. In a fight, she was fine, but Roman had always done all the talking. She was as ill suited for a verbal debate as Roman was in a cage fight.

And now he was gone. He was gone, and he was _never_ coming back. Without him, she had no one to speak for her.

No one except herself.

Alone, with no one in front of her or behind her, she opened her mouth. Her unpracticed lips trembled and her tongue felt like lead, but it had not been so long to make her forget entirely.

For the first time in years, Neo Politan broke the silence, and spoke.

WWW

A/n I don't normally do one shots, so this was a bit of a thought exercise for me, and let me tell you, it is _great_ to start a story that will get finished in two chapters instead of one that will outlive me. And speaking of things that I've never done before, this is the first story I've ever written with a cowriter. That's right, folks! Grave of Silence was half written by the great and illustrious Magery! I wrote the present, and he wrote the past, so if it looks like the writing style changes every scene, that's why. Hopefully, our different strengths were more complementary than jarring, but we'll let the readers decide for themselves. Magery, do you have any words for our loyal readers?

 _Hello, people who've almost never certainly heard of me! Let me tell you, when I first started reading and writing fanfiction, the idea that I'd one day write a story side-by-side with_ Slavok _never occurred to me. Hopefully this one is as much fun to read as it was to write; it features all four of my favourite characters—Ruby, Neo, Cinder, and Qrow—and I got to write about three of them! The massive style switch between present time and flashback is a bit of an experiment on my part that Slavok kindly humoured, so here's to it having worked, eh?_

By the way, you can find Magery's profile at fanfiction dot net / u/4279252/ if you replace the word dot with an actual dot and delete the spaces. You can find my profile if you click on the word Slavok at the top of the page.


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